Eternal presence and bittersweet desolation

I wake up to see what my memory has hidden from me.

I don’t know why but I came home and washed absolutely everything. As though the grief was still stuck to me and needed to be, not removed, but refreshed. As though it had tarnished to a black but I would rather it remain a light grey. As I arranged my washed underwear I wonder, is this the pair I wore at the cemetery ? Is this the pair I wore crying in R’s lap ? Is this the pair I wore unconscious whilst an ambulance was on its way ? The pair I wore when I spent Christmas with L ? Obviously I’ll never be able to tell. The difference is indistinguishable. 

I wanted to do some sort of ritual but I don’t know how those work and I fell asleep. Maybe the burning of two candles with a string between them. Some sort of closing, but I don’t want to close myself off from you. I want the candles to be forever entwined. Melted together, even. I refuse to believe you are gone. My head knows it but my body will never really comprehend.

I walk blue in the rain with haste. I slack the leash and smoke fast. I get the first, and subsequently my worst, cigarette out of the way.

I did what I always do.

What do you always do Leyla ?

All of our texts are gone from when I got a new phone, though I know they were only ever messages to meet each other, and I scold myself thinking, how could I not have left good enough evidence of you ? But I wanted to be present, always, and when we spoke, I only ever wanted to hear each other, not read text on a screen. I guess the only thing I can do now is make sure that I don’t stop writing again. There are no unimportant details.

You met me at my most fragile and loved me still. I, a wounded bird, and you. You ? There are no words in my head for you. You were always my porcelain doll, I suppose. Not that you were perfect, but as close as I have seen a person come to it. You gave me hope when mine had just about run dry. 

What happens at the end of a walk ? I just go home. I wipe Blues feet so as not to let him soil my sheets with muddy paws. I just go home. There is not much more.

The fourth floor of our building, where J and I live, smells strongly of excrement this morning. Human, I believe. This reminds me of the time someone defecated on the second or third floor (I forget) stairwell and wiped their hands on the wall, leaving a mark of brown. My Polish neighbour was convinced the mysterious person had drawn a swastika and showed me photos she had taken of this muddied marking. Others assumed Blue had been the one emptying his bowels in our apartment building. Tut tut. A dog never shits where he lays. My best guess was that, our front door that never closes left an entryway to the numerous homeless who live on our street, and upon finding the old toilet stairwells that are 1. No longer in function and 2. Almost always locked, a small incident occurred. Or should I say large. It was not at all the size of a small animal, nor are there any more foxes in Paris after having been exterminated a long time ago I believe. The only small creatures that persist are rats, and god knows what size a rat would have needed to be to leave behind such evidence. My excrement tangent is over now.

I found a book your mother told me you had read recently and enjoyed at the airport on my way back to Paris. The deal was “buy two, get the other half off”, so I picked up a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four along with it, seeing as the selection was pretty poor. I read half the book in the airport, having my plane delayed 3 hours. I squinted through my benzodiazepine weakened eyes and every so often, glanced at the bookmark I’d bought at Tbilisi airport and try to familiarise myself with the alphabet. I finished the other half at home on the couch, next to Blue’s loud breathing. I fell into a thick slumber, yet it only seemed to last an hour or two. My body, aware of my intolerance for napping, woke up before I could be too angry about wasting time. I hate wasting time. Time is all we have.

I never explained what my memory had hidden from me. The morning I woke up after having arrived home, my first sleep back in my bed, my pillow was covered in blood. Somebody told me later that it looked to be in the shape of a dog. I see the resemblance. Some small terrier or a spaniel with short legs. I examine the crime scene. My box of tissues toppled over. A tissue full of blood on my desk, and another thrown on the floor in between my house slippers. The most frightening thing is that I never forget things like these. Normally I am woken by a choking of blood in the back of my throat, or the quick dribbling of warm blood out of one or both nostrils. I usually always make it in time. And when I don’t, the toilet bleach comes in handy. When I got out of bed, I saw a river of dried blood that had cascaded and hardened down from my nose into my ear. The place where tears seem to pool when you cry on your back. I come to the conclusion that, though a chronic light sleeper afflicted with a persistent hyper vigilance, the exhaustion significantly outweighed any discomfort, and ultimately, fatigue won over. But the memory loss ? It scares me stiff. Can fatigue efface a memory ?

My throat infection persists. Three months or so. My neighbour rolls objects around downstairs. How can he ever be unhappy that I play my guitar ? A foul man. A lonely man. But that is no excuse.

A few days after arriving home I received two books in the mail with no return address, except that of the book store. Days pass and no one admits to having purchased these two books for me. I wonder whether this is another instance of lost memories, but I assure myself that I would have remembered something like this. I finish the first, and the second sits on my desk, being a glossary that I cannot simply sit and read through in one sitting, but more so flick back and forth when needed. The books are specifically relevant to my interests. I think of anyone I had told about this book store, about these authors, and about the languages I have been studying, and last of all, someone who would know my address. I have ideas but none seem to make much sense. My ex never paid attention to what or who I was reading, though this is by best guess. Perhaps I am missing a particular someone whilst I tumble through friends in my mind. I called the bookstore. Twice yesterday and once today. They never respond. Perhaps I should write them an email ? Or maybe I should let the mystery live on. Either way, I feel I have already lost interest in this subplot of my life.

The man across the street has stopped masturbating to my (very modest) presence in the living room. I think J and D scared the shit out of him when they confronted the young woman at the front desk of the apartment compound. J asked me for pictures or videos of him to file a police report for me before I left town, but such evidence doesn’t really exist. You can hardly make out his face. It’s funny because I had written about him before everything had turned foul. I wrote : 

« You shake your hand by the wrist (waving). To me, you are the man behind the window, that’s all. Sometimes you join me in smoking. Sometimes you join me just to feed the pigeons and shake your hands. I always smoke two cigarettes. You always smoke one. »

« The man across the street and I play games through our windows. He wraps towels around his head, does magic tricks, and I swirl my locks into little devil horns and shake them around. We laugh and smoke, then return to our lives. I will probably never know his name. Is loneliness considered a disease ? Or is it merely a choice ? »

We spent a few months like this, no words spoken between us, only gestures. You would ask me if I was tired. You would ask if I had eaten. Again, talking solely with your hands. You would make the pigeons run back and forth for me like little circus animals. After three or so months of this, you had asked me to write down your number and signed the numbers through the window one by one. I couldn’t understand but tried to write it down, and then shortly after, questioned why I would be writing down the phone number of a 50 something year old. I believe my depressing encounter at the psych ward has led me to be too kind at times, seeing as though everybody was 50 + in my ward. Perhaps I had grown naive. I stopped believing that people were capable of cruelty, but everything good has the capacity of being tarnished. You hide behind your blinds now. I notice you’ve bought a new plant. Probably something to look after since I no longer give you any attention. Just know, my window acquaintance, if I ever do see you on our street, I would punch you straight in the mouth.

Most people forgot my birthday this year, which would have significantly affected me more had I not spent my whole day in airports and on airplanes. I was afraid to turn 25. Most people believe me to be 19 or 20, which I take both as a compliment and an insult. Most people believe me to be taller than I actually am. This one is purely a compliment. Now that I am this ‘dreaded’ age, I feel no different. I felt 25 when I was 13, once more when I was 16, then again at 19. My twenties have just been patiently waiting for the official age diagnosis. The stamp on my life that I am a quarter of the way through a century. I don’t want to reflect, nor to scrounge up some aspirations. I am stubborn yet fickle but I know what I want. As I wrote once, and most probably plagiarised, on my wall : « Things will always be hard but they will always get easier ».

I’m going to buy one apple and some toilet paper at 20h on a Sunday. On Thursday I’ll get tooth gems where you recommended I go. Tonight I watch Alice by Jan Švankmajer. Tomorrow I’ll be upset about the possibility of rain. 

The ring of yours that your mother gave me has slowly peeled off some of its silver plating. I notice three bumps on my finger and refuse to admit that it is giving me an allergic reaction. 

The ring is now unwearable. My skin refuses the alloy. I gently place it into the ceramic pot where I have put all the belongings your mother gave me. The ring is in good company, with your favourite lipstick, still having the shape of your lips in it, your favourite lip liner, and a small plastic ziplock with one of your hairs attached to a hair pin. I put your perfume on today. I’d bought it, for obvious reasons, but I don’t tend to wear it, for obvious reasons. I plan on putting your hair into a locket of mine you told me you liked, I just don’t know yet what pattern I'd like to weave your hair into. I have never made jewellery with one single hair. It’s strange to finally create my own mourning jewellery of someone who has actually passed. I looked at a picture of your hands yesterday. I looked at every finger. I studied the shape of your nails. I miss you. I miss you terribly. I speak to your mother here and there. It hurts me deeply to see that she has outlived her own child. I miss you. I miss your grave. I miss sitting next to it with you. I miss whispering to you from above the dirt and rubble. I will be back soon. I’m sorry to make you wait so long. 

Remarkably, I find all of our old texts. I discover the secret book sender. I will go to the police about my neighbour. My apartment no longer smells like a sewer. Everything falls together gradually. I sob gently during my last exam thinking solely of you for the whole 4 hours. I learn your mother tongue slowly and steadily. The alphabet, now memorised. I wait, still, for my textbook to arrive. At least I can say the most important thing, something I should have said to you a long time ago. მიყვარხარ